Thanks to the new image packaging architecture in Oracle Solaris 11, you can now automate the installation of Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0. Why is that such a big deal? As Lucia Lai explains it:

"Without the AI, you would have to manually install the cluster components on the cluster nodes, and then run the scinstall tool to add the nodes to the cluster. If, instead, you use the AI, both the Oracle Solaris 11 and the Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0 packages are installed onto the cluster nodes directly from Image Packaging System (IPS) repositories, and the nodes are booted into a new cluster with minimum user intervention."

Lucia goes on to explain how to set up and configure the AI server, how to plan your cluster configuration for the automated installation, how to use the scinstall utility, how to set up the DHCP server, and more. A thorough, well-written article.